How High the Moon
.ψ.
Chapter Twenty Six: Sandpaper Tongue
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I guess you could say I'm a little afraid
What if you go away? I've seen it before,
I've been here before.
If I have to love myself, tell me how to love myself.
What's there to love about myself?
I just want to see that as a person you want me.
But I'm feeling the pain of all these bags in the way,
And I'm thinking you're just gonna run away,
And I can't catch you.
I guess I would say that I want you to stay
'Cause you have this strange knack,
Adds a glow to my black as you chase it all away.
And I hope that you can see I will someday leave these things.
I am waiting to be free.
But I'm feeling the pain of all these bags in the way,
And I'm thinking you're just gonna run away,
And I can't catch you.
Oh, I want to catch you.
-'I Can't Catch You', Sixpence None The Richer
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Sometimes Charlie wondered why he still read the paper.
Headlines steadily grew grimmer as the weeks passed. By January, the muggle death toll had reached nearly 600. The magical count was not far behind. In February there was another attack on Hogwarts herself, spurring endless debates on how best to secure the castle and flooding old Professor McGonagall's post with suggestions. (Charlie, of course, knew that the best solution was a herd of dragons around the perimeter.) Abductions, murder, and torture were no longer even guaranteed to make front page news.
But every now and then a tip would secretly make headway for the Order and save lives. It was a very tiny glimmer of hope in the clouded skies of darkness, but it was still a glimmer. Frankly, Charlie Weasley would take whatever light he could get. Though he had only been involved in a handful of the rescue missions, two more nameless deatheaters had died by his wand. The nightmares were getting harder to ignore.
Sometimes he dreamed of the boy with the brown laughing eyes. Sometimes when he lifted the masks off of the lifeless corpses, it was Kingsley or Don or Tonks or Fred. Sometimes it was Stella. Worst of all were the nights when he dreamed of Ginny, who still lay pale green and barely breathing in the room next to that bloody morgue.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the dreams had been his only problem. It was silly to be afraid of a dream. Especially silly when you woke up in the warm, round little arms of the girl you loved, when you could touch her face as she slept and remember what was real and was an illusion. No, the dreams were the least of Charlie's problems.
It was the waking world that was starting to rub his scales the wrong way. Every morning felt like such a chore, every commute to Diagon Alley via those strange muggle 'tubes' like a numbing hex to his heart. As he herded various dragons from cave to cave for their rounds it felt as though the perpetual darkness of the vaults was beginning to press in on him. During his hours spent shoveling vast heaps of dung, he wondered if one day it would just swallow him whole. Hardest of all was feeding time. It wasn't the gore of the eagerly mangled, mail-order deer carcasses that would have made most people a bit ill, but because of the sad, second-rate lives these unparalleled beasts would never even realize they'd been reduced to.
Was he like the dragons? The thought often bothered him while rinsing out Odie's newest love-nips. Charlie couldn't help but draw parallels between the confined lives of his charges and his own. It was at times like that when he missed Wallachia the most.
Old images of soaring above the nesting grounds and the stark crispness of Katya's peak against an October's full moon warred with the pale imitation of freedom that he knew now. He could still smell the must of the research barns, with the golden specks of light stirred up from the haylofts. He could hear the crooning of the ridgeys that rumbled through your bones from a mile off. And the wind … Circe, the wind. Every breeze was a haunting tease of the furry he'd once flown through everyday. Sometimes if he tried hard enough he could almost feel the snow rasping his skin raw as he raced Krum through the double pass to the east. It was like a phantom limb.
Every day came down to a fight, but Charlie knew somewhere in the steady part of himself that it didn't matter. He pushed it to the side and pressed on. Life would get better. Besides, he always had something to look forward to when he punched out. No matter what mood research had put her in that day, Stella always had at least a small smile for him. Oh, he might not see her for the rest of the night, holed up down in her makeshift lab that had –much to Charlie's dismay- uprooted his beloved tartan couch, but there was that smile.
Sometimes Charlie wondered if he couldn't manage to live on that smile of hers.
Yet even forgetting the comfort of his hot-coco witch, all of his problems seemed so very petty when compared to fears of You-Know-Who, whose power was a stubbornly growing presence just out of sight. They were frustrating though. Again Charlie wondered just why he was he was shelling out five galleons and a knut every year to be depressed via post.
Suddenly a sharp whizzing flew past his ear, breaking Charlie's concentration.
He blinked wildly and let the paper fall onto the soggy grass, seeking the source of the attack.
"Sorry 'bout that Charlie!" Tonks squeaked from a pile of charred boards a few meters away. "I didn't mean to…"
Twitching an eyebrow, he turned to find the weapon and discovered that he'd nearly been impaled through the eye with a rusty nail.
"Err, right then… You want to watch where you're flinging those things?"
Her attempts at an apology were cut off by hoots of laughter. They both turned to see everyone doubled over with laughter. Lupin had gone red in the face, and Charlie's dad was barely holding himself up.
"It's not funny!" He shouted grouchily and heard Tonks echo.
"Then why are we … why are we laughing so hard little bro?" Bill's scars contorted strangely over his grin.
"I could fix that for you…"
"Give over Charlie." Kingsley rumbled warmly. "Wouldn't have happened if you'd been watching her."
"What, and stop mooning over Myra?" Bill cackled. "Not a chance."
He wasn't mooning! He'd picked up the ruddy paper to stop thinking about her! "Yeah, well…"
"I do not need watching!" Tonks shrieked, not for the first time, brimming with indignation. "I'm a grown woman! There's got to be something better to do than this!"
"We might check up on the bonding solution." Mr. Tonks suggested in a rustling voice, effectively turning the conversation. "I believe it may be finished."
So it was that the group tramped over to the bare remains of Stella's childhood home.
As an angry, pent-up winter slowly drifted into a dull, boggy spring, it had became undeniably clear that the flat was simply not big enough for both Stella's parents and themselves. As soon as the ground had half-way thawed, a crew had been rounded up to rebuild Downy Hills. Arrayed in a grubby mix of old robes, cast off work gloves, and patched muggle clothing, the small team had spent a lot more time getting muddy than getting the house built. It would never be a headquarters again, but it would at least get the Tonks' out of Stella's flat. Merlin, he would have moved mountains to get them out of there, especially after the incident in the shower…
Fortunately, all that Charlie was required to do at the moment was watch Tonks.
It had also been decided that she should wear safety equipment for her own protection.
'Safety equipment' ended up consisting of a pair of Stella's lab goggles, bits of muggle sportswear for something called scatboard, –Charlie had yet to figure out why anyone would play sport with a board made of scat– and an odd shaped green bowl on her head that hooked under the chin with straps.
To make completely sure that she didn't hurt herself (or anybody else for that matter) it had also been unanimously decided that Tonks should do the most simple task they could find (pulling nails out of old boards) without magic and at a safe distance. That was when Charlie had gotten wrangled into watching her.
She had not been amused by any of this, and loudly threatened her new husband with several acts that made everybody but Bill and Kingsley blush and cough.
Yet even Tonks in all her outlandish glory was allowed to come and examine the puzzling result of one of the solutions that had been brewing.
"I don't know about this, you lot." Bill frowned at it, tilting his head like he always did when he was considering something.
Lupin prodded the concoction with his wand suspiciously. When it wiggled about at the touch he crinkled his neatly trimmed mustache and made no comment.
"Are you sure this is right?" Mr. Weasley asked cautiously.
"Why's everybody looking at me?" Tonks inquired as innocently as she could … which wasn't saying much. No one said a word, but everyone just stared. "I swear! I didn't go within a hundred meters of the ruddy thing!"
The staring continued.
"Actually, this may just be correct." Offered Mr. Tonks as he surfaced from a nearly Neolithic spell book with a scholarly tone. "It appears to have all the qualities of the completed description, and it is a bonding formula. Meant to hold up walls remember." He hoisted Stella's strange old book. "This is a construction manual after all, but it being in ancient Mongolian doesn't really help. My Mongol's a bit rusty. I could be a bit off on some of the translation…"
Everyone was now staring at Mr. Tonks with the same stare they had just directed at his daughter. He shrugged and gave them a dusty, nervous little apologetic grin. Charlie was beginning to see the family resemblance.
"Nice dad." Tonks grinned cheerfully, smacking her chewing gum and slinging her arm around the muggle-clothed man affectionately.
"I suppose we could try it." Lupin gave his wife a little lopsided smile. "No harm if it doesn't work."
"Unless it blows up." Tonks giggled.
"I'm game for explosions." Kingsley Shacklebolt, a friend of Bill and Tonks, rumbled with a slightly dangerous gleam in his eye that made Charlie think of an enormous, bald-headed five year old boy with his first fireworks. "Course I don't think there's much to your theory, rookie. This looks about as explosive as a pile of vomit."
"I dunno." Said Bill, his scarred scalp reflecting the mucky light of the spring afternoon. "Charlie, you remember that summer when the twins tried to use Ginny as a tester?"
"You mean those puking pat things?"
"Yeah, that's the one." Bill grinned as their dad just shook his head. "All the little puddles kept blowing up! The loo got so bad that the ghoul managed to backfire out of the plumbing!"
Mr. Weasley began to chuckle. "You mother was so angry with them that night that she threatened to … err, I mean … that was very wrong, of course. We should never have let them slip that into her kippers…"
They all had a few good laughs at the childish but never the less hilarious idea of exploding vomit and each one of them silently vowed, not for the first time, to never EVER accept anything from either of the twins no matter how innocent it might seem. Eventually work recaptured their attention though.
"I still say it looks like vomit." Kingsley Shacklebolt boomed with a helpful grin as he went back to consulting Mr. Tonks on aligning the lumber for a section of wall. "Vomit soup. Or petrified vomit maybe."
Tonks perked up from her little corner of the brown garden grass and readjusted her comical goggles, nearly removing Charlie's ear with her hammer in the process. "I concur, doctor." She commented thoughtfully, unaware of his ear's narrow escape. "It kind of smells like your socks when you leave them under the bed too long, Lulu."
Lupin laughed at her wrinkled nose and shook his head. "Occupational hazard of marrying a longtime bachelor, Dora. And don't call me that."
"Call you what Lulu?"
"Dora!" Lupin's ears turned a brilliant shade of dragon's fire red and Charlie was strongly reminded of other things that run in families.
"I'll stop calling you Lulu when you stop calling me Dora, Lulu." Tonks ruffled her distraught looking husband's hair, much to his dismay, as she picked a lint ball off his patched argyle sweater vest. "You know how much I hate that name. It sounds so … girly."
Bill, who was still attempting to make sense of using the aptly dubbed 'vomit soup' and not making much progress, sat down and asked no one in particular: "Why exactly did we agree to this again?"
Charlie really had to think about it for a moment. Mr. Tonks was there because it gave him a chance to dig into Stella's arcane book collection, and Charlie's dad came because Stella, who was orchestrating the whole affair but conveniently elsewhere during the actual work, was being cheap and insisted they do a good deal of the labor by charming funny muggle instruments instead of hiring someone. Charlie was convinced that his dad would swim the fiery lakes of hell themselves if it meant he could poke and prod at his precious muggle bits.
Bill was there because Charlie had decided that if he was going to be dragged into something like this then he'd be darned if he was the only one.
As for Charlie … well, it would never cease to amaze Charlie just what Stella could talk him into.
Then again, talk probably wasn't the right word. She would just wait until the rest of the occupants of the flat were duly engaged and then she would strike, yanking him unexpectedly into a corner or empty room for a good snog.
Now clearly Charlie had no hesitations about the snogging part. He instigated the act as often as he could, in fact. But sometimes Stella used those, his moments of little brilliancy, to a very unfair advantage and he would end up making promises that he never would have otherwise. It was a frustrating situation. Charlie, not for the first time, privately wondered just why he was with a girl who would manipulate you as soon as kiss you.
All his questions seemed to fly away when he was with her though.
"Tonks, what are you…"
A horrible ruckus whipped Charlie around to find a pile of boards, several upturned cans of nails, half a cauldron of the 'barf soup', some twitching elbows and a tuft of bubble gum pink hair.
"Ow." Grunted the pile of rubble.
"Dora!"
"Lord, rookie! What are you up to now?" Kingsley grumbled good-naturedly.
"What happened to watching her?"
"I was … That is I …" How had he ever gotten this bad? "I only turned away for a second and …"
"Oh, you might as well go find the girl." Bill laughed. "You're too moon-eyed to keep your head on anything else. Gulping gargoyles Charlie, you're almost as bad as the one-witch-wreaking-ball here!"
"Hey! Tonks freed one leg from the jumble with and indignant grunt.
"You have to admit, he does have a point." Lupin helped her out.
"Does not!" She flounced angrily back to her boards full of nails and began to attack them.
Lupin looked lost and confused.
"It's gotta be a witch thing." Kingsley rumbled to Charlie and Bill with a conspiratory chuckle. "Are yours this bad?"
"Worse." Said Charlie, just as Bill replied. "You have no idea."
And there it was again. He had thought of Stella as his again. Oh, not in the sense that he could own her or anything. Stella would have beat that idea out of anybody's head at first sight. But it was more that just that sense of knowing she was his girl. He wanted more. He was bursting to tell her what she meant to him. Traipsing through the muddy gray hills in search of her, Charlie realized that was what terrified him most of all.
By the time he spotted Stella's round silhouette kneeling in an old pasture up ahead, all other thoughts were long gone. He tried to work up the courage to talk to her. It would be a shame to waste a chance alone like this. He rehearsed what he could say, but everything sounded cheap or stupid or silly. And what if she didn't feel the same?
Charlie had never been this committed to a witch in his life. Oh, he'd seen his fair share of girls, but all of them had walked in and out of his life and left him in pretty much the same condition as they found him. He'd been ok with that. More than ok with that, truth be told. He had been happy to be free of the annoying tie-downs a 'deep' relationship might have.
But when he'd come home from Wallachia to find all his old mates married, some of them already cleaning spit-up and changing nappies, something had snapped inside. Charlie realized for the first time in his life how lonely it could be without someone to complicate your life.
And then, almost as if by a miracle of Mrs. Weasley and Bresa Tremlett's God, Stella had arrived. She brought more strings with her than Charlie would have ever thought possible. But he didn't really mind. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like he ought to be somewhere else, that he ought to be doing something else. He could be, well, if not exactly comfortable with the way life was then maybe … half-housebroken. She gave him an anchor, a reason for going to work and waking up every day.
He couldn't loose that.
When Stella saw him she smiled that warm, hot-coco smile that produced butterflies the size of guinea pigs somewhere in his spleen and motioned for him to sit down with a dirt encrusted trowel. Haphazard little rows of white stones, a few holes in the ground, and a half-dozen old fruit canning jars full of white cloth told Charlie exactly what his girlfriend was up to. He shook his head and had to grin. For all her protesting that she hated Herman's "smelly pests", Stella was a big old sap for those freaky little were-rats of hers. Oh, she would have lopped off his ears for at the suggestion, but how else could you explain the fact that she took the time to make a ruddy rat graveyard?
Personally, Charlie thought it more than bordered on eccentric. The first time she'd taken him up here, Charlie asked her why she didn't just feed them to one of Herman's birds. This was a mistake. Stella had swelled up like a puff-fish and informed him in a sanctimonious tone that "these creatures did humanity a great service, Charlie Weasley! This is the least we can do for them."
He wondered if this was the reason for those idiotic rumors about Stella's sanity and half-thought they might have a point. Not that it changed much on his end of things. She was still Stella whatever she did with her weird little rats and he loved her. He was occasionally surprised and disgusted by her … idiosyncrasies … but he did love her.
Charlie's feelings for her, however, were proving to be an annoying obstacle. His tongue was mysteriously dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth much like the vomit-soup solution.
Trying to avoid the fact that he was a stupendous coward for wasting this chance, Charlie contented himself with quietly watching her etch little names into the blank stones with an unfamiliar spell. None of the names followed any pattern he could think of.
"Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Nixon… What sort of a name is Nixon?"
"Muggle politician. I'm beginning to wonder if it was really wise to name the poor things after politicians. I don't want to think that I jinxed it, but this batch has been the fastest in the history of the project to snuff it." She said, looking rather put out. "I just don't know what went wrong! We were making such progress with the nitrate levels in the soil and then … poof! They were dying like ice pixies in Tahiti. You know, maybe it was the water samples. Or the change in conditions after the attack. I wonder if it…"
Charlie began to tune her out. She could drone on about this stuff for hours. If you weren't careful she could actually put you to sleep. He'd done it once or twice. Besides, Charlie wasn't fond of dwelling on the fact that their tartan couch, like the rest of Stella's basement, was occupied by lab equipment and cages of those ruddy were-rats. Charlie had never before in his life met an animal he truly despised, not even the horn-tails that used to maim him at Wallachia. Heck, he didn't even really mind Odie at the bank and that dragon was the only creature to ever beat out Fred and George for attempts on his life. Dragons were magnificent creations that just happened to have a few nasty little habits. The were-rats, however, seemed to be on the warpath for Charlie and Stella's budding romance and therefore Charlie hated them as he had never hated any creature before.
He despised them.
He detested them with a blue flame of loathing.
.ψ.
By the time the sun began to melt there was still sandpaper in Charlie's throat. He had hardly spoken whilst the morning turned to afternoon, still wrestling with his jumbled emotions. Even Stella, despite her natural state of stupendous obliviousness, managed to notice that something was up.
"You have not said a word to me all day, gatito." She didn't even have the grace to look the least bit ashamed when she asked if he was still angry with her for, err … persuading him to come along. In fact, Stella looked downright pleased with herself.
"If I said I was, would you stop doing it?"
"Not a snowball's chance in hell." She smirked, her plump hands on pudgy hips.
Charlie could only shake his head with mock disappointment. "Then I suppose I'm not."
"Good." She smugly went back to work. "Besides, I was beginning to wonder if one of your scaly friends had decided to rip out your tongue."
"Nah. Odie's been behaving like an angel." He lied through his teeth, glad for once that Stella rarely noticed what was right under her nose. The burns he'd hidden under one of his old and unseasonably warm Weasley jumpers itched as he spoke and Charlie wished, not for the first time, that dragon's fire was as easy to heal as a normal burn. "You shouldn't worry about the creatures down there anyway. If anything in the vaults were going to maim me, it'd be your sister."
"Hey now!"
"It's true. Ever since they got back from Samoa she's as grouchy as an injured Erumpent when Lupin isn't around."
"You've got a point." Stella chuckled, pausing her project to flop onto the ground next to him belly-up. "I swear I have never seen two people more obsessed with each other! Oh, Nyms is the more, err … demonstrative … of the two, but Remus is just as bad."
"And by demonstrative you mean as randy as a kneezle in heat?"
Stella rolled her eyes. "Something like that. I'm not sure how they manage to breathe when they are constantly attached to each other like that. I know that they are newlyweds, but honestly! They both go all moon-eyed at the mention of the other's name. Was your brother this bad?"
"Not in public." Charlie admitted, growing red. "I made a point of not asking just what they were doing while Bill was holed up in that hospital room though."
Charlie instantly knew he'd just said exactly the worst thing possible. A thunderhead suddenly loomed over Stella and there was a very predatory look in her eye.
Brilliant Charlie.
Just brilliant.
"They were doing what? In my hospital?" He came just short of reminding her she didn't work there anymore. "While he was my patient? Did they have any idea what kind of complications they could have caused? That's probably why we had so much trouble with his case! When I get my hands on the two of them, I'm going to…"
"Whoa, slow down! I was just joking, Stella! I'm sure Fleur was a perfect angel."
"Hmph." She grunted. "They better not have. And don't call me that".
Charlie thanked all twelve of his lucky stars once again for the fact that he was a much better liar than his girlfriend.
Having no desire to repeat the purple freckle incident until he figured out a counter-jinx (which would be a while since he was abysmal with defense) Charlie decided not to challenge her on the whole nickname thing. He still didn't think it was fair that she got to call him gatito whenever she wanted. He didn't even know what that meant for Circe's sake!
"This Lulu business is frustrating though." Stella mused absently. "Boys used to be the only thing I could ever embarrass her about, but with this she just shakes her head and ignores me!"
"Not to mention the fact that she attacks the man whenever she sees him. In front of whoever is there." Charlie agreed heartily. "He comes to visit her on lunch sometimes. Did she ever tell you he gets motion sickness? Bloke looks like a broom-wreck every time the goblin dumps him out of one of those carts. Griphook said Lupin fainted once and nearly toppled overboard into the big underground lake."
"Oh Circe! And I bet will wager that she attacked him the minute the poor man rolled onto solid ground, no?" Charlie nodded, grinning, and she shook her head. "I will never know how she gets him to let her do that! I am not sure I want to. I love the girl, but I do not think anyone ever informed her that too much PDA can be a bad thing."
"There was a night when they came to dinner and halfway through Bimby's sublime roast Remus had a look of abject horror on his face." She rolled over and began to shake with giggles. "We all tried to ignore it, but Nyms was … well you know Nyms. She kept bumping the table while she … in the… oh Circe, you should have seen Ted's face! And Lulu … I mean …" Stella ran out of breath, drumming her fist on the ground with her eyes squeezed shut and Charlie couldn't help but remember how much he loved her laugh. Loved her…
"Still," she giggled as she caught her breath and went back to work, "I have to admit that it is rather sweet."
Charlie grunted in what he hoped she would take as agreement and said nothing. The whole subject had an unfortunate way of reminding him of what lay so heavy on his mind. Then again, just about everything made him think about it lately.
The whole affair made him a bit nauseous.
Yet in spite of his nerves twitching like they'd been doused in Bulbadox powder, Charlie couldn't help but smile as he watched her. The secret of what he felt was bursting to get out. When he looked at her it was like she'd been waiting there forever, since the beginning of time. Like they had been waiting for each other. She fit. Everything clicked. It was just that good, that honest, a feeling of complete RIGHTNESS. There was no other word for it but that: right.
So why was it so bloody difficult to explain?
Trying, as usual, to take his mind off of his failings, a larger white stone in the back of the small clearing caught Charlie's eye. Not the stone itself, exactly. The name written on it.
"Gato?" Charlie was intrigued. "Like Gatito?"
"Si." She grinned. "That's your namesake. Though to be fair, gato is a cat and gatito would translate to something more like baby kitten."
"Baby kitten?" He asked suspiciously.
Charlie Weasley was not a baby kitten. Charlie Weasley was a wolf or a bear or –better yet- a dragon.
NOT a baby kitten.
"What do I have to do with baby kittens?"
"That first day I met you, when you came in the tent holding your own leg … do you remember that? You reminded me of something."
"Yeah, I remember. I was in agony, and you spent half the time laughing at me. I thought you were the maddest witch I'd ever met."
"And now?"
"You're still the maddest witch I've ever met." He deadpanned.
"Flattery gets you nowhere, gatito." She batted her eyes at him mockingly.
"Oh it won't, will it?" He lunged and pinned her to the ground with a grin, trapping her hands under his.
"No." She giggled, not at all ruffled by the rough and tumble game. "It will not."
Charlie bowed down over her and whispered softly in her ear. "We'll see about that."
"You think so?" Stella tried to keep a straight face, but the corners of her mouth were twitching with that tell-tale grin as her breathing picked up pace.
"Yeah." Charlie's lips were all but brushing hers, and he could see his own excitement reflected in her eyes. "I do."
"Charlie?"
"Yeah?" A voice in his head was rocketing around and screaming at him to tell her, but his throat was so dry he couldn't speak.
"Shut up and kiss me."
"Right."
It took them a while to come up for air.
"I still don't get it." He pondered out loud as they rested and watched the gray storm clouds shuffle in from the east. "What does a detached limb have to do with kittens?"
"I had a kneezle when I was young." Her eyes turned cloudy, flying off faraway from the present. "He was arrogant and stubborn, and the instant I met you I was reminded of him. It was just the sort of thing he would have done, get himself maimed and hobble in on his own power trying to pretend nothing had happened, even if he was holding his own leg."
She grinned, and Charlie wasn't sure if she was thinking of him or the kneezle.
A sudden softness came over her. "He was a gift from my first real friend."
Charlie waited.
"I didn't have many as a child. Friends, that is. Buela thought most of the neighbors beneath us and those she might have allowed me to associate with thought she was quite mad." She smiled fondly. "They were not far wrong on that of course, but it never mattered much to me whether she was off her head or not."
"Dotty as she was, the family name still commanded a great deal of respect in that country. I was eventually introduced to a small boy near my age, and we took well to each other. His name was Emilio Cavalone."
She ran a finger along a line in the soft dirt.
"Milio and I grew up together, playing wizards and goblins, running amok in the gardens, terrorizing the house elves … the usual kid stuff. When I turned seven he gave me a kneezle kitten for my birthday. Being the creative soul that I am, I named him gato." Again she smirked at a scene only she could see, somewhere just on the other side of the trees. "It was his mother that picked the kitten out of course, an elegant gesture of a purebred animal from her beloved son to the daughter of another prominent family. I'm sure she was probably trying to wrangle a marriage contract for me out of Abuela at the time."
Charlie held Stella a little closer, a tad ruffled by the idea of anyone having a marriage contract with her. Stella just laughed and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"You have nothing to worry about, you ass. I am not betrothed."
Though he was a bit startled that she could tell what he was thinking (and slightly more startled at exactly what he had been thinking), Charlie did not fail to notice the hollow ring to her laughter.
"What happened?"
"He died." She said simply, brushing some dirt off of her grungy robes.
He was as gentle as he knew how, holding her even closer. "Oh, Stella."
She pushed him away softly. "I'm fine silly. It was a long time ago."
"How did he…" Charlie trailed off and Stella sighed, picking up her stubby wand and going back to the little white headstones.
"The Cavalones were lovely people. I was terribly fond of his mother especially, even if she was a bit of a stiff body." Her wand fell from the little stone block, and she folded her hands in her lap. "But they held some beliefs that were contrary to the dark … to you-know-who's teachings."
"So?"
"People who disagree with that bastard tend to have pretty short life expectancies, Charlie."
It took him a minute to understand, and all he could manage to say was. "Oh."
"So, erm … what happened to your kneezle?"
At this she sighed deeply but gave no other signs of distress, showing even less reaction than she had to the mention of her friend's murder.
"It was a few months after I saw Milio for the last time." Her features were so still, almost lifeless. "Mother and father came to see Buela, and Gato was misbehaving. Little monster was tearing through the house for hours that day after the june bugs."
"And?"
The tightlipped smile she smiled at the small headstone in front of them was empty and chill. "Mother didn't care for his antics."
Charlie waited for the rest of the explanation for several minutes in silence, but she said nothing.
"But what happened to him?"
"He was such a mischievous little thing." She smiled again faintly, playing with the little embroidered stars and moons on the hem of her dirt encrusted robe and not looking at him. "Used to steal my socks."
"Stella?" He was beginning to edge on confusion and a slight sense of worry. "I don't understand. What happened?"
She looked up and answered him with blank features and a half shrug. "Mother didn't like him racing about."
His brain felt about as blank as her face. What was she going on about? What happened to it?
Then it hit him like a bulgder in the gut.
"Do you mean to tell me that she … she …" He hung slack-jawed. "You must be joking!"
She sent him a look that was more appropriate for an argument over who'd won the 1942 World Cup. "Why would I joke about something like that?"
"Do you mean to tell me that your mother … she …" He couldn't bring himself to string the whole sentence together out loud. "Your pet? Your own mother? That's mad!"
Stella's raised eyebrows indicated that he was a bit slow on the pick up.
"I doubt even the dark lord himself would contest you there." She said with a half grinning shake of her head and a snort. "Bellatrix Lestrange is not widely considered to be the sanest individual in the magical community."
Charlie's eyeballs nearly exploded from his head.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Authoress's Notes: What to say? I've gotten eternally frustrated with this beasty, but I'm still determined to plow ahead. In hopes of spurring myself onward, I'm going to try to resist reading the final book until I've at least gotten all of my rough drafts for this story finished. So yeah, this is, I'm sure, going to be horribly non-compliant with HPDH. Eh. That's life.
Oh, I'm kind of curious. What are your reactions to the end of this chapter? Like it? Hate it? I will say that this has always been part of Stella's character from the very beginning. I didn't just throw it in at the last second for some interesting drama, but rather it was the origin of this story. I have an odd sort of affection for Bellatrix, you might say. It is complicated. If anyone is dying to find out, tell me and I'll explain it next chapter.
Random- As always, I am overflowing with gratitude for your faithful reviews dear!
SpontaneousImplosion- Thanks! Kind words never go unappreciated! No, no worries. That's not OCD. Stella is pronounced like the beer, and that's actually the backstory joke behind her nickname. Charlie, when he first met her, couldn't pronounce the Spanish double ll in her last name, so he thought it would be funny to call her Stella instead. Stella, as you might remember, is not a big drinker, and was peeved. Thus began the epic saga of the nickname.
Keeper of the Were-Rats- Thanks again luv! Your sweetness is always such a great motivator. I hope that you enjoy uncovering more 'secretness' this time around!
Hoeun- I can't begin to tell you how touching your review was. Thank you so much dear! Those are the sorts of things that every writer loves to hear. Thank you thank you thank you!
WaterInAPuddle- I think I am going to call you Puddles from here on out.
In other news… HUG! I can't tell you how good it was to hear from you luv! It always seems that your reviews come at the perfect times to pick me up out of my nasty writing slumps and give me a firm yet loving boot in the posterior. You are a peach.
And yes, you got the refrence. I am floored! I didn't think anyone would get that! For being an incredible detective and a more than wonderful supporter, you have certainly earned a sneak peak at JAPOG! I hope you enjoy!
.ψ.
She perched there on the same stool at the bar like a harpy eagle on its roost, night after night once her band was done. She ordered the same drink, traditional martini. With those unnaturally long fingers of hers, the utilitarian stem of her glass became something fragile and delicate. Light sparkled and refracted from the swaying liquid. The act of drinking became an art form.
He sat there and wondered idly about a pale, thin pair of lips.
Once, when he was small, his grandmother had taken them to Norway for the holidays. The old woman sometimes said that her daughter had given birth to a fish instead of a boy. And it was true; he never felt more at home than in the water. Norway had been the experience of a lifetime, with its dazzling, angry seas, its playful hot springs that wrapped you up like a smoky kiss, its glacier lakes that were so cold that even he had quickly admitted defeat.
A thin jagged country, not so unlike the thin, jagged woman that he sometimes amused himself with wondering about. Craggy mountains, impenetrable forests and dark folklore that forbid anymore than an idle thought or two. The way she carried herself was all look and no touch. Come to think of it, she was probably aiming more for the 'don't even so much as think about looking or I rip off your bollocks'. He smiled into his rum.
That one was a mystery.
She was wind driven and melodramatic and impossible as any northern ocean. Frigid enough to chase away any who sought the thrill of diving in to something cold, just like those glacier lakes. She really could have been a mountain lake, with her eerie, unblinking eyes.
She wasn't particularly pretty. In fact, she was downright dull. But her eyes drew you in, almost because they were so unnaturally odd. Still, vacant water that went down forever into a dangerous world where no human being could survive, hidden by an icy serenity that threw the world back in your face when you tried to enter. She was like the glaciers themselves, sharp and unforgiving. She was hard and unbreakable as diamonds.
As he watched her drink, his heart looked at her and called her Norway.
And it made him curious.